Interview questions posed to Tuck students in previous years

Expect from most banks

Why (insert the name of the bank)?
Are we your first choice?
What groups are you interested in? Who have you spoken with in those groups?
What were your grades?
What was your GMAT score?
Do you have any questions?
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INTERVIEW 1:
Ask GMAT
Ask class grades
How would your study group rate you?
If your study group were saying.. "He's great, but…" what would they be saying?
What constructive feedback did you get at the end of the year in your job?
Tell me about a time you failed?
Tell me about a time you had to work in a group?
Imagine a steel factory in Hanover and in St. Louis. Both with the same revenue, but different TEVs.
Why?
Costs?
Coke?
Mississippi= cheaper access to steel and iron ore?
Closer to customers?
Old Asset
Take a mineral resources firm. How would you value it?
What would you do about a terminal value?
What are your strengths?
You could probably have stayed at your previous employer and become a manager etc…. What was the
epiphany moment for you to come to the US?
What was your favorite subject?
Is there anything that you've failed at that you hoped we wouldn't ask about?
If an oil & gas client came to you and asked for ideas, what would you advise?
Questions for us?

INTERVIEW 2:
Ask class grades. (DECSI? and FMAR)
If I offered you $3000 now, or $1/day for the rest of your life, which would you choose?
Have you been following any deals recently?
Who have you spoken to in our Nat Res group?
How do you value an oil/gas firm?
What is your weakness? (Too much attention to detail, and inability to delegate are not options)
How would you value a firm?
What would you do about a terminal value?
Why Tuck?
Why IBD?
What from your past experience makes you think that you'll be able to work in a corporate environment
with lots of very smart people?
Have you worked much with excel?
What are some reasons a firm's value may change?
What do you do for fun?

INTERVIEW 3:
Tell me about a time you worked in a team?
Tell me about a time you worked as a team leader?
Time in a presentation that you realized you made a mistake. How has that affected the way you
present in future?
Consider the valuation of Zoetis
Zoetis didn't have lots of comparables.
How would you think about valuing it?
DCF… what are some of the potential problems?
Beta
How would you find comparables? What metrics would you use? Size, profit, profitability
margins etc.
What companies would you pick as comparables?

INTERVIEW 4: Old Barclays Case Study

Farmer's Friend
167 stores through growth and acquisitions in Southern USA
20 new stores planned for 2014 and 2015
18 consecutive quarters of revenue and EBITDA growth
Sales growth ~15%
What state do you think this firm is in in 2013?
What other types of industries would you compare this company to?
How could this firm grow?
If growing through acquisitions, how could it be financed?
EXHIBIT A: Fin Statements (1p)
1bn assets
Net Income Margin 2.5%
Payables ~50
Is this a healthy company?
Debt / assets ~50%
EBITDA/Interest expense ~2.5

How do you think this firm could grow?

How much working capital?

What is goodwill?
Farmer's made a $500M acqiuisition in 2012, how much PP&E and how much Goodwill?

What gives a higher valuation? IPO vs. Acquisition?

EXHIBIT B: 5 comparable companies' metric. What multiple should you use?

Market Cap
 TEV
TEV/Sales
TEV/Ebitda
Debt/Asset
Growth

EBITDA 175M
TEV= 2100

This company paid a dividend. When? How Much? How was it financed?
$111M in 2014, financed through a loan

Did accounts payable go up in 2012? Is it a source or use of cash?

Company A and company B are considering acquiring farmers. Which one should do it?
Company A already had lots of debt?
Company B had no debt.
Company B had TEV/EBITDA=20
Company A had TEV/EBITDA~12
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1. Tell me your past experiences from the valuation side. How you value the company.
2. Is there a time that you helped the company generate sales revenue growth?
3. Tell me one time that your study group face challenges or doesn’t work out.
4. What are your weakness?
5. Why we choose you?
6. What’s the difference between the tax from FCFF and accounting tax. Is the FCFF calculation of
tax wrong or need adjustment?
7. Why the LBO market now has more secondary buyout? What’s the advantage of the secondary
buyout? The key differences between IPO and secondary buyout
8. If you don’t have BS or CF statement, how you can calculate FCFF only from income statement?
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Technical:
• What are different ways to value a company?
• How would you calculate FCFF?
• What makes a company a good LBO target?
• Tell us about these deals you worked on – what was the rationale and how did they go?
• Why would a deal be dilutive initially, and the become accretive later on?
• A company writes off inventory worth $10, buys $100 PPE with half debt and half cash, and
issues stock dividend of $5. Walk me through the impact of these transactions on the three
statements, assuming a 20% tax rate.

Fit:
• Walk me through your resume.
• Grades and GMAT.
 • We have your grades – do you think you’ve done well in class?
• What makes you think you’ll be a good investment banker?
• What are you hoping to learn here at BAML?
• Why BAML?
• What groups are you interested in?
• What’s the one thing you’d like us to take away from this conversation?
• Tell us about your progression at this job and why you left?
• Why Tuck?
• If we gave you an offer, would you take it?

1. Go through your resume

2. Suppose I’m your grandfather and know nothing about finance or accounting. Please explain
depreciation to me.
3. Please select one deal from your resume and describe it to me. Is it announced? Who is the
buyer?
4. Why do you really want to do banking?
5. Describe an experience when you were challenged by client
6. How will you respond when your supervisor is not satisfied by your work?
7. Describe a challenging situation
8. Why xx bank?
9. How to calculate post-merger EPS?
10. Why do you think you’re reading for banking at this moment?
11. When a company is making an acquisition and valuing the target, whose WACC should be used?
12. Why sometimes for the same company, the P/E ratio and the EV/EBITDA ratio are different?
13. How will NPV change when tax rate increases?

1. Tell me about yourself / Walk me through your resume (BAML, GS, Barclays, UBS, Evercore)
2. How did you perform in your courses? (BAML, GS, Barclays, UBS, Evercore)
3. Why banking? (BAML, Evercore)
4. Why UBS? Why BAML?
5. Why do you want to work for a boutique and not bulge bracket? (Evercore)
6. Tell me about a time you lead a team (BAML)
7. Tell me about a time you failed (BAML)
8. How has your experience been working with your study group at Tuck? What issues have your
faced? How did you resolve them? (BAML, UBS)
9. According to you, what is the role of the associate? (BAML, UBS, GS, Barclays)
10. How would you explain Investment Banking to your grandmother? (Barclays)
11. As an associate, suppose you are working on 4 concurrent projects and are assigned to a new
project? How do you manage your workload? (GS)
12. Suppose you are working with an analyst on a high profile deal and come to realize that the analyst
has completely checked out from his work and isn’t motivated at all to complete his tasks. How do
you manage him? (GS)
13. Tell me about a deal you have been following (GS)
14. As a follow-up to the deal question above – I’m Bill Ackman and I own 5% of your stock, I come to
your management and ask you to explain why you made this deal. What would you say? (GS)
15. How would you manage your work-life balance as a banker? (GS)
16. If I were to give you $1MM today, what would you do with it?
17. Tell me how you would begin to value a company. (BAML, UBS, Evercore)
18. Tell me how you would value a laundromat (Barclays)
19. What is your opinion on today’s economy? (UBS)
20. Explain DCF, Comparables method, Precedent Transactions & LBOs to me. (BAML, UBS, Barclays,
Evercore)
21. Which valuation methodology will provide me the lowest valuation? Highest? Why? (BAML, UBS,
Barclays)
22. How would you create value for your shareholders? (Evercore, GS, Barclays)
23. As an investor in a company, what would I prefer: a share repurchase or a dividend payout by the
company? (Evercore)
24. If you were the CEO of Company A with P/E = 1 and were considering buying Company B with P/E =
10, would you go ahead with such a transaction or not? Assume tax of 30%. (Evercore, Barclays)
25. Assume a company with P/E = 10 wants to buy a company with P/E = 15. Is this transaction accretive
or dilutive? Why? (Barclays, UBS)
26. What are the characteristics of a good LBO candidate? (BAML)
27. Why do LBOs provide the lowest valuations? (BAML, UBS)
28. Walk me through how to calculate Free Cash Flow? (UBS, Barclays)
29. What is WACC? Does increasing debt lead to decreasing WACC always? (UBS, Evercore, GS)
30. Walk me through the 3 financial statements and how are they related?

31. Tell me about yourself / Walk me through your resume (BAML, GS, Barclays, UBS, Evercore)
32. How did you perform in your courses? (BAML, GS, Barclays, UBS, Evercore)
33. Why banking? (BAML, Evercore)
34. Why UBS? Why BAML?
35. Why do you want to work for a boutique and not bulge bracket? (Evercore)
36. Tell me about a time you lead a team (BAML)
37. Tell me about a time you failed (BAML)
38. How has your experience been working with your study group at Tuck? What issues have your
faced? How did you resolve them? (BAML, UBS)
39. According to you, what is the role of the associate? (BAML, UBS, GS, Barclays)
40. How would you explain Investment Banking to your grandmother? (Barclays)
41. As an associate, suppose you are working on 4 concurrent projects and are assigned to a new
project? How do you manage your workload? (GS)
42. Suppose you are working with an analyst on a high profile deal and come to realize that the analyst
has completely checked out from his work and isn’t motivated at all to complete his tasks. How do
you manage him? (GS)
43. Tell me about a deal you have been following (GS)
44. As a follow-up to the deal question above – I’m Bill Ackman and I own 5% of your stock, I come to
your management and ask you to explain why you made this deal. What would you say? (GS)
45. How would you manage your work-life balance as a banker? (GS)
46. If I were to give you $1MM today, what would you do with it?
47. Tell me how you would begin to value a company. (BAML, UBS, Evercore)
48. Tell me how you would value a laundromat (Barclays)
49. What is your opinion on today’s economy? (UBS)
50. Explain DCF, Comparables method, Precedent Transactions & LBOs to me. (BAML, UBS, Barclays,
Evercore)
51. Which valuation methodology will provide me the lowest valuation? Highest? Why? (BAML, UBS,
Barclays)
52. How would you create value for your shareholders? (Evercore, GS, Barclays)
53. As an investor in a company, what would I prefer: a share repurchase or a dividend payout by the
company? (Evercore)
54. If you were the CEO of Company A with P/E = 1 and were considering buying Company B with P/E =
10, would you go ahead with such a transaction or not? Assume tax of 30%. (Evercore, Barclays)
55. Assume a company with P/E = 10 wants to buy a company with P/E = 15. Is this transaction accretive
or dilutive? Why? (Barclays, UBS)
56. What are the characteristics of a good LBO candidate? (BAML)
57. Why do LBOs provide the lowest valuations? (BAML, UBS)
58. Walk me through how to calculate Free Cash Flow? (UBS, Barclays)
59. What is WACC? Does increasing debt lead to decreasing WACC always? (UBS, Evercore, GS)
60. Walk me through the 3 financial statements and how are they related?
61. Walk me through how a $10 increase in depreciation flows through the financial statements.

• Walk me through how a $10 increase in depreciation flows through the financial statements.
With the new president-elect, how do you think his policies/administration will impact the
investment banking industry? Talk about positives and negatives
• (if a candidate has or shows a strong background in one particular industry) tell me what we
should talk about if I were to go meet your ex-company’s CEO
• If you were going to lend money to a company, what metrics would you look at and why?
• If you had an opportunity to meet the management team, what questions would you ask
of them and why?

Of all the people we are interviewing (at Tuck and other schools) why should we hire you?
What are your strengths?
What’s something you see about yourself as a potential weakness for this role?

Leadership Questions:
What approach do you take in getting people to follow your lead? Provide an example.
Tell me about a time when you were leading a team through a difficult situation.
What is your leadership style? Provide an example of when this style has served you well.
Have you ever led a group or committee who didn't report to you? How did you do it?

Teamwork Questions:
Tell me about a project you have worked on where teamwork was critical to your success.
Tell me about a time when you were working on a team and there was a conflict.
Can you give an example of your involvement in a team that was less than successful?

Other Behavioral Interview Questions:

Can you give me an example of a time you led a project from start to finish?
Can you describe a time where you had to work with ambiguity?
Give me an example of a time you creatively solved a problem.
Tell me about a time you used data to sell someone on your idea or point of view.
Tell me about a situation where you had to make a decision without much information.